The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see
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The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see resource for landlubbers and mariners alike.

Carol Gafford is a public librarian, family historian, amateur archivist and book savior. She is currently the youth services/outreach librarian at the Swansea Public Library and volunteers for several museum and historical societies including the Marine Museum at Fall River, the Swansea Historical Society and the Bristol Historical and Preservation society. She is the editor of Past Times, the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists and is always looking for a new project to take on.

Just because he's been an integral part of the meteoric rise of Grace Potter & the Nocturnals over the past decade, doesn't mean guitarist Scott Tournet has abandoned his own musical ambitions. Potter and the Nocturnals will be touring with the Allman Brothers Band later this summer, after the Vermont singer and her band spent much of last year touring with Kenny Chesney.

But in between the Nocturnals' heavy schedule, and often in the midst of it, Tournet has been working on a solo project of his own. Tournet's brand new album "Ver La Luz" was released on Tuesday, and he's doing a short concert tour which touches down at Brighton Music Hall tonight.

Tournet was writing and recording his own music even before he joined the Nocturnals, but his last previous album was way back in 2006, when he released "Everyone You Meet Is Fighting A Hard Battle." He termed that album a series of songs about "struggle, hope, and acceptance," and has said the new one is a continuation of that kind of theme.

On the new CD, Tournet is playing almost all the instruments himself, having recorded various tracks over the past year, with the help of producer Mike Kamoo, who's previously worked with The Stereotypes and The Loons. Austin Beede, former drummer for the band Alberta Cross, came in the studio to provide the rhythmic foundation, and Tournet's fellow Vermonters Kelly Ravin and Lowell Thompson added vocal harmonies. Potter herself co-wrote a couple of tunes with Tournet, and sings "The Longing" with him as a duet, where their two voices harmonize beautifully.

Like Potter, Tournet loves the music of the 1960's, when rock might include blues, soul, country, jazz and swing, all at the same time, along with some mind-bending effects. It's obvious Tournet has had fun crafting his own concepts together, as soon as you hear the opening cut and realize "Lights Go Down" has sounds from a video game as part of its percussion. The tune "Song for You" is the kind of airy pop that suggest what you might get if Brian Wilson had a twangy side. And songs like "Stand By You," "Here In the Morning" and "Crawl Back" have the kind of bluesy, rocking soul that characterized many Sixties' favorites.

"It's exciting to realize my album came out, literally, today," said Tournet when we caught up with him Tuesday morning. While Potter and the band are on a short break from touring, Tournet was back in Vermont rehearsing his own band and preparing for this week-long tour of his own.

"It's all about expectations," said Tournet. "I'm happy to be going out for a week, althoughn it is a whole lot more work for me. We get spoiled: this time I'll have no crew, and it's back to the van, lugging our own instruments. It'll be a nice reminder of how good we have it with Grace and the band."

As Potter has shot to fame with four excellent albums since 2006, the Nocturnals have performed all over the world, on numerous tv shows, and alongside a litany of the music world's greats. But you have to struggle to get Tournet to admit he might be a bit more self-confident on this solo CD than on his last.

"I had done a couple solo albums before this, and had my own band before joining Grace," said Tournet. "Doing this one now is more about being offered the luxury of doing my own album, with the freedom of NOT having to depend on it financially. Like my 2006 album, this new one is schematically barking up the same tree, of people overcoming things in their life, what you're going through as a person. I don't make up stories--all of these tunes are somehow related to my own life and experiences."

"I do believe that this time I have found a smarter way of writing about that stuff," Tournet added. "I believe I'm less narcissistic about things, less pessimistic, like I've grown beyond my 'teenage girl poetry' of my younger days. Musically of course, I've been through a lot over the last seven years and met a ton of people I'd grown up idolizing. I hope I'm still humble, and I try to keep myself in check. I try to think about what I'm lacking when I meet and play with those people. But maybe, yes, maybe these past few years have given my self confidence a little nudge forward."

"It's so easy and comfortable playing with the Nocturnals, because Grace takes so much of the spotlight on herself," said Tournet with a chuckle. "Back in 2006 when my last CD came out, I was still kind of scared to sing in front of people. Now, I still get a little nervous, but all these years of touring with Grace have really helped me get used to being on stage and enjoying it."

Tournet's connection with Potter goes back a decade or more, when they were sort of competing singer/songwriters, and Tournet, who was born in Pittsfield, was putting together his first CD.

"I was doing this little solo, 'bedroom' album, before I had joined Grace's band," Tournet explained. "She had helped me out withn that, and at the time Grace had a trio and was playing local gigs around Vermont. I opened for her trio a few times. Then, after joining her in the first version of the Nocturnals, I also started my own band--the Blue Lasers-- on the side."

"Around the time of that 2006 album, I was younger," Tournet pointed out. "I think I was really angry, so those songs have a lot of pointed anger at life in general. Now, at 36, I think I have mellowed out a bit, and see things differently, so that's an obvious difference between the two albums."

Being able to build the new album from assorted pieces recorded at separate times, often while on tour with Potter, made this project possible. There's already a cool story about how that duet vocal with potter on "The Longing" was actually recorded in a locker room while the band waited to go onstage before a football stadium full of fans.

"Yes, we were on tour with Kenny Chesney, since Grace had that duet with him last year," said Tournet. "We were in the locker room, I think, the Denver Broncos locker room, and it seemed like a good place, with great acoustics, to get it done. My fellow bandmates were all supportive, and me doing this was no big deal. (Fellow Nocturnals guitarist) Benny (Yurco) was always pitching in to help, and Benny actually put out his own solo CD last year. Everyone in the Nocturnals has something up their sleeves, so putting this together in my spare time was no problem at all."

Tournet doesn't know about that Brian Wilson comparision we offered, but he does admit to loving the rock of the Sixties, where studio experimentation really had some of its most fertile days.

"Playing all the instruments myself is a fun way for a musician to do a project like this," Tournet noted. "Going back to The Beatles, a large part of 'The White Album' was all about them doing that. Another reason is that I had moved to San Diego and didn't know anyone. I found Mike's studio, and he gave me affordable rates--because this is an indie project all the way. I had limited time in the studio, so I was sending parts back to Mike all the time, and he put them together."

"Personally I wouldn't cite Brian Wilson as much, although we all loved the Beach Boys," Tournet said. "Although I did aim for melodic songs that were going to be very listenable, with big singalong choruses. Maybe what I would say is that Pink Floyd was a big influence on me. I like that spooky kind of thing. I think in my previous recordings, I had gone for a more masculine, AC/DC kind of sound, but I've gotten burned out on that, and want to explore more pop-like melodies now."

Is that indeed a video game heard on "Lights Go Down"?

"We did have a good time routing the drums through different things," said Tournet. "There is all kinds of new technology which makes it exciting to do this sort of thing, and a lot of it found its way into this record."

But if lots of high-tech stuff helped make it happen, Tournet's album was also a project undertaken with a decidedly lo-tech approach at heart. He pointed to the Black Keys, with whom the Nocturnals have shared a stage or two, as major inspirations in that regard.

"I think it's obvious that the Nocturnals, like the Black Keys, are steeped in the blues," said Tournet. "We have three songs off the last Nocturnals album that were co-writtenn with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. One thing that stood out for me was that he raved about this $120 microphone that he recorded with. That's what he preferred, instead of these ultra-sophisticated mikes you see that cost a couple thousand dollars. Dan's a renegade, and I thought it was so cool that he won a Grammy with the album they recorded with that $120 mike."

"I recorded all my vocals on this album with that same model mike," said Tournet with a laugh. "And basically, all the time I was doing this album while on tour with the Nocturnals, I was doing it all on that mike, and with my little laptop."

Tournet said he's especially excited to be headed to Brighton Music Hall, which he hasn't seen since it was formerly Harper's Ferry.

"My brother went to Tufts, so I've spent some time in Boston, going to clubs and so on," said Tournet. "We've played the Paradise and the House of Blues with Grace of course, and that's been awesome, But I always wanted to get back down playing a place like Harper's Ferry. When I was there as a kid, I could only imagine someday being in a band that played a club like that. So I feel like I have some history there, and Friday's show is going to be a real kick for me."

EARTHFEST: Music fans are also reminded that Saturday marks the latest edition of Earthfest, the free all day concert at the Hatch Shell in Boston. This year's headliners are Vertical Horizon, and if the Long Island rockers have been accused of being too vanilla, we always liked their sense of melody and dynamics when they were playing the old Lupo's in Providence a decade or so back. David Lowery's two eclectic musical personas will also be on the bill, as Cracker's rock-with-satire is playing, as is Camper Van Beethoven's improbable genre-mashing adventurism. Music starts around noon, and goes to about 6 p.m., and there is a kid's stage as well.